Internet disconnecting almost everyday since joining Plusnet 1 month ago from Sky!

[#1]

Just over 1 month ago I migrated to Plusnet from Sky ADSL up to 17Mbps.

With Sky I also had internet disconnections frequently in the past when my noise margin was dropped to 3dB. My line unfortunately cannot cope with a 3dB noise margin profile. There seems to be interference that causes my connection to drop out. And this is the worst on a Tuesday. I have even witnessed the noise margin drop to 0.1 dB for both upload and download and stay there and it never recovers until the connection eventually drops out. 

Strangely I tend to not have any disconnections in Friday, Saturday and Monday. So despite having gone through a 14 day DLM when joining Plusnet last month in January the 24th with the router always staying on. My maximum Uptime has only been 6 days.

We don't have FTTC yet here in Central London as we are on an Exchange Only Line despite being on a plan for Superfast last 10 years.

The disconnection is mostly frequent in the morning. Although I see it now happen in the afternoon as well since the noise margin is capped at 3dB so even when the connection drops out the noise margin returns to 3dB.

With Sky when I called them they changed my SNR profile to 9dB manually so when my internet does disconnect my noise margin would jump to 9-12dB. The problem with a 3dB profile is that the noise margin never recovers so when it goes down to 0 the vicious cycle of disconnections continue several times a day.

After calling Sky about 2 years ago to raise my profile to 9dB manually at a slightly lowered speed my connection has been stable for 56 days. Average connection has been stable for at least 20 days before having a disconnection. Also with Sky 9dB cap often in the morning the noise margin does drop to around 3-5dB but the noise will quickly bounce back to 9-10dB after a couple of hours this prevents the internet from dropping out.

I only joined Plusnet due to Sky hiking up the price silently to £30 a month from £21.50 otherwise I was happy with Sky. In fact with Sky my upload noise margin has always been rock stable at 7.7dB. With Plusnet noise margin for both Upload and Download is very low.

Maybe I need to have my noise margin capped to either 6dB or 9dB to see if my connection will stabilize again like it did with Sky.

Edit: I seemed to have made a mistake posting this in the Fibre Broadband subforum instead of the ADSL Broadband forum section.

Many thanks.

[#2]

Hi @serajmi,

I'm sorry to hear that you're experiencing these issues with your connection. I've tested your line today and I can see that the SNR Margin was set to 3.8dB, so as requested I've boosted this up to 9dB. Going forward for the next few days I would recommend keeping an eye on the connection from your end of things and if you do notice any further drops it would be best to carry out our online troubleshooting guide, which can be found here.

I would also strongly recommend setting the router up within the test socket of the property whilst troubleshooting the issue and a guide on how to do this can be found here.

If none of the above helps to resolve the issues that you're experiencing then please let us know and we'll be happy to investigate the fault further.

[#3]

Moderators Note
This topic has been moved from Fibre Broadband to ADSL Broadband.

[#4]

Many thanks for that!

Yes I can now see my noise margin jumped to 9dB for download! 

Hopefully this should stabilize my connection. I have connected to the test socket. In fact previously some 18 months ago a Sky engineer came to my property to test my line, he connected a new BT Openreach socket and even removed the orange ring wire from the socket.

He saw nothing wrong with my line and referred to send a BT Engineer as he was certain the problem was outside. However, at that time the BT engineer never came after a missed appointment.

I have always connected my internet using the test socket. However, I have never tried connecting from the intrusion point of my property. The disconnection was never solved until when I rang Sky again a month later and then decided to cap my noise margin to 9dB rather than call the BT Engineer again.

In previous years I never had the disconnection problem. I think this disconnection issue started to happen only 2 years ago when BT Openreach DLM was lowered to 3dB by default. Unfortunately it appears that living in a high rise building causes an accumulation of noise to the line especially since I don't have FTTC yet. Perhaps only in future when FTTC or FTTP comes to my area then this disconnection issue will be solved. But for now I have to sacrifice speed for a stable noise margin.

I'm going to observe to see how stable the connection remains. I'm also worried about the upload speed noise margin. I remember on Sunday when the connection dropped out it was the noise margin that was lower for the upload speed at 0.1dB while download was 2.6dB. Throughout the last 1 month since migrating to Plusnet it seems like the upload speed noise margin has struggled more compared to the download speed noise margin. That wasn't the case with Sky where upload wouldn't budge below 7.7dB while also having a higher upload speed at 1200kbps.

Anyway, let's still see if the connection holds. Upload speed is at 4.2dB while download is 9.1dB.

[#5]

Thanks for the update, @serajimi

Let us know how you get on!

Best wishes

Dave

[#6]

After almost 5 days the internet has dropped out again.
However, this time I have noticed that the router seems to have restarted by itself. When I check http://192.168.1.254/expert_user.html 

Uptime:

0D 1H 32M 56S

The router uptime according to the Sagem Expert User page was normally on for 20+ days or so prior to that. But it is now showing as only 1 hour and 32 minutes.

6 - Uptime:

0 days 01:32:13

There was no power cut at all, neither was there a firmware router update for it to restart by itself. Noise margin was also stable 3.8dB for upload while 8.9-9.1dB for download.

Now I don't know whether you could confirm whether the noise margin had silently went down to 0 that caused the disconnection. Or whether it was DLM that slightly increased the speed from 

7 - Data rate:

955/14992

to

7 - Data rate:

968/15116

Even if it was DLM I still can't quite explain why the Uptime of the router has reset itself. I can only assume that this Plusnet Sagem router is not a very good quality router.

[#7]

Hi @serajmi,

My apologies - I may have misunderstood what you're asking, but the "up timer" of the router would reset if there was a drop in connection, so what you're reporting is accurate?

As you've noted, today was the first drop in five days, so I'm not too concerned in terms of your connection as things stand - with standalone drops it's often difficult to diagnose the cause, but at present I would continue to monitor and report back if further drops occur.

Best wishes

Dave

[#8]

Sagemcom uptime reset.png (1,646 KB)
Well I'm talking about the uptime from this page http://192.168.1.254/expert_user.html, not from the main Plusnet helpdesk page http://192.168.1.254/helpdesk.html

Normally this Sagemcom Uptime never resets. You can check for yourself. The Uptime in this page normally remained unchanged for days even when I had several disconnections this past month since joining Plusnet. Only the Uptime in the Plusnet helpdesk page would reset. But in the Sagemcom expert user page it would remain days connected without it being affected. This usually indicated router uptime was stable.

Today at around 11:50 am was the first time this happened to my observation. I was in the middle of playing FIFA 17 PC and it was actually offline play with the AI. But I got a notification in game that I lost connection to the EA Server. I thought it was an EA server issue. But as soon as I exited my game and checked router stats I saw it was disconnected and was even more shocked to see that the Uptime in Sagemcom page was also reset. This gives me the suspicion that the router may have restarted by itself due to potential overheating. But of-course I can't confirm that yet. Router firmware update remained unchanged so that wasn't going to be the case.

Years ago around 2005 when I had Tiscali 1Mbps, I was supplied with a Sagemcom F@ST modem and had loads of problems with it restarting due to overheating. I had to buy a Netgear router and the issue was fixed. I'm going to have to observe and see if this Sagemcom router from Plusnet is also causing similar problems as I am wary of cheap brands. If this is the case then I may have to change the router. Usually speaking from my experience with Sky last 2 years my connection would remain rock stable for 20-56 days on average with a 9dB noise margin profile. However, upload noise margin was definitely better on Sky at 7.7dB. With Plusnet it hovers around 3.8-5.4dB on average which is a bit of a concern. But from my observation past 5 days I didn't see it go lower than that. Noise margin for download generally remained at 9dB and only went down to 4.8dB temporarily for a short time a couple of days ago before recovering back to 9dB. 

Moderator's note by Adie (Dvorak) removed IP and serial number from attachment.

[#9]

Hi @serajmi,

Thank you for confirming those details. I'm sorry for any inconvenience that the connection issue is causing you.

I can see the drops on your connection log:

However, testing your line isn't picking up the cause of this from here:

xDSL Status Check
Circuit ID:	CBUK76458019	Service ID:	BBEUXXXXXXXXX
Telephone NO.:	NA	Test Executed On:	04-03-2019 12:17:45

xDSL Status Test Summary
Sync Status:		Circuit In Sync
General Information
NTE Status:		NTE Power Status:	PowerOn	Bypass Status:

	Upstream DSL Link Information	Downstream DSL Link Information
Loop Loss:	13.0	25.0
SNR Margin:	4.0	8.6
Errored Seconds:	0	0
HEC Errors:	0
Cell Count:	2703371	202047713
Speed:	967	15116

Maximum Stable Rate (KBPS):	15904	Fault Threshold Rate (KBPS):	12723
Mean Time Between Retrains (Seconds):	86400	Mean Time Between Errors Upstream (Seconds):	86400
Indicative Line Quality:	G	Mean Time Between Errors Downstream (Seconds):	6646
Custom Thresholds
MTBR_RED:	MTBE_RED:
MTBR_GREEN:	MTBE_GREEN:

From what you've said, it looks like the router may be the root cause of the problem. I've ordered a replacement for you to try and it'll be with you within 3-5 working days.

If the connection issue persists once you have the new router, please run through our troubleshooting guides here and let us know how you get on.

[#10]

Many thanks, Emily.

Yes this time there were 2 disconnections again just over half an hour ago. But this time the Uptime on Sagemcom has not reset. I've seen this tendency happen mostly in the mornings. From afternoon-night time the noise margins tend to be stable again.

Uptime:

1D 1H 15M 36S

Plusnet Helpdesk below has reset as expected.

6 - Uptime:	0 days 00:29:45
7 - Data rate:	983/15177
8 - Maximum data rate:	908/15892
9 - Noise margin:	1.0/8.6

The main culprit is that the noise margin for upload is struggling to maintain itself as I just saw it drop down to 1.0dB. And then jumping back up to 5-7 dB.

Oh wait, it has now dropped to 0.2dB for upload. No wonder my internet is dropping out! Noise margin for download jumps periodically from 5dB back to 8.6dB. I suspect the drop out issue is probably caused due to upload speed this time.

With Sky I had opposite issue. Upload wouldn't budge below 7.7dB ever! Whereas it was the download noise margin that was the problem which was solved with 9dB profile and from then onwards my drop outs were once in 20 days on average with a max uptime of 56 days and 53 days.

And now as I am writing this I can see my connection dropped out again... Now it recovers again but this time 

7 - Data rate:

860/14816

I think it's either the router causing problem or maybe Plusnet is not suitable for my area... Anyway, I will see if the new router fixes it. If not I will have to try using a netgear router to see if things improve.

[#11]

Hi @serajmi, do let us know how you get on with the new router. Thanks.

[#12]

Update: While I can confirm that the latest router is working fine and hasn't restarted yet in 24+ days. I'm happy to return back the old router. However, the internet has disconnected and dropped my noise margin back to 3dB today morning! 

Actually initially the line was set at 9dB noise margin profile as per my request. After a few days DLM decided to drop my noise margin to 6dB at around 5:30am. I wasn't very happy with that knowing how unstable my line is even under a 6dB noise margin profile.

For 19 and a half days the internet connection uptime was rock stable and I was very happy, even had 6ms response time in speed test. Now this is still a major improvement compared to Sky. Because with Sky line couldn't cope with 6dB for more than a few days. I was amazed to see that my connection was stable for 19 days even with 6dB noise margin! 

However, having said that over the period of those 19 days I have noticed glimpse of periods where the noise margin would drop to as low as 0.9dB for 20 minutes or so before recovering back to 6dB.

A few days ago at around 2:30pm the line disconnected but the speed increased. I don't know if this was DLM again. But it was 16814 for Data rate it slightly jumped to 17000 at 6dB.

I just woke up to check router stats again today morning DLM once again at approximately 5:30am has decided to increase my speed while dropping my noise margin back to 3dB!  

6 - Uptime:	0 days 03:23:17
7 - Data rate:	1245/18511
8 - Maximum data rate:	1244/20124
9 - Noise margin:	6.2/3.0

DLM is ridiculous because it is assuming that my line is able to cope with 3dB noise margin since it managed to cope with 6dB for 19 days. For Data Download rate my noise margin has never and will NEVER cope with a 3dB noise margin for more than a few hours to a couple of days. There are no IFS, BUTS or miracles. 3dB is not suitable for an Exchange Only Line. It is only suitable for very stable lines on FTTC. I don't have FTTC and Openreach will never give us FTTC even though it may state that my areas is on a plan last 10 years.

I know my line will never cope with 3dB profile. So I am wondering whether it is possible to permanently cap this noise margin profile to 6 or 9dB? I don't want DLM to ever drop my noise margin back to 3dB because I know my line will never ever be stable with a 3dB noise margin profile. I don't care about speed. Yes, I am now getting close to 16Mbps but what's the point of that if the connection will drop out again?

[#13]

Hi @serajmi 

I'm really sorry to hear that your line is back to 3dB. 

I can request this to be pinned to 6dB - as soon as we get a reply I shall update this thread. 

Kind Regards, 

MoR

[#14]

As expected the internet dropped out! 3dB is indeed never going to be stable under no miraculous circumstance! But the noise margin did bounce back to 6dB. 

6 - Uptime:	0 days 00:08:41
7 - Data rate:	1201/17017
8 - Maximum data rate:	1220/18680
9 - Noise margin:	6.5/6.4

I am happy for the noise margin to be pinned at 6dB or 9dB. But my worry is what if DLM drops it back down to 3dB? Are you able to configure the setting so that the noise margin never drops below 6dB following a DLM?

I would like the minimum dB to be set at 6dB and maximum noise margin to be 9dB when line is deemed unstable. But the problem is this DLM drops noise margin over time to 3dB when it believes the line is stable which is an illusion!

I don't want to see after few days/weeks of stable connection to have DLM drop the noise margin down.

[#15]

@serajmi - I've just had confirmation that your line has been pinned to 6dB

Please allow 4hrs for the changes to reflect in the profile and 24hrs for the Circuit to stabilize.

Kind Regards, 

MoR